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3. Theoretical Insights and Econometric Model of Relative Contract Position

4. Data and Results

5. Conclusions

References

Abstract

Nationwide, most public school teachers are paid according
to a uniform salary schedule determined by their school
or district. While this precludes variation in salaries over
teachers of identical qualifications within a school, there is
variation across schools in the parameters of the salary schedules.
We adapt nonparametric programming techniques to
analyze the determinants of school-level teacher salaries.
For each school, a lower and upper bound of average salary
is identified given the school’s teacher characteristics. Observed
average teacher salary then identifies the relative
contract position of the school within the space bounded
by those two frontiers. Our sample consists of 132 public
schools in Ohio that enroll students in each grade between
kindergarten and eighth grade, including both public “community
schools” with non-unionized staff and traditional
public schools with unionized teachers. Our results indicate
that unionized school teachers earn more on average than
community school teachers after controlling for experience,
education and student, school, and community characteristics.